False Highs and True Lows
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: "The man that died today... You knew him?" After a loss, Jane and Kurt fall back into once-familiar comforts.
1. False Highs and True Lows

Weller didn't even notice what had happened at first. He was too busy trying to take out the double snipers on top of the cargo ship to pay attention to much else. Reade and Zapata had been attempting to rush the enormous freighter, but the second they'd moved into position, snipers had popped up, holding them off. Jane was on the other side of the yard, unable to aid, so it was left to him to take out the snipers. He hit one, watched him crash down on the first level of the ship, but couldn't bag the second. It hardly mattered, though, for the moment he'd the first, the other had disappeared, and that had given Zapata and Reade time to board the ship.

Weller knew there were at least four other suspects on the ship, so he had to follow behind, cover their backs. He radioed the team with his position, waited for their acknowledgment, and then ducked out from behind the shipping container he'd been using as cover without looking back.

It had been a stupid mistake. A careless mistake.

But at the time, all he'd been thinking of was Tasha and Reade pinned down inside, and Jane tied up God knew where or how, and he couldn't spare a moment even to check out for himself. He had to get to them.

Three shots rang out behind him, un-silenced and precise.

Weller spun around at the sound, his gun immediately up, only to watch one of his suspects fall to his knees, gun in hand, and then face-plant down onto the pavement. Blood pooled around him from the three holes in his back, and Weller stared, heart pounding with far too much adrenaline for 2 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, as the team shouted in his ear, demanding to know if he was okay. He could hear Jane's voice, frantic above the rest, could hear her breath, coming in hard, as she ran to his location.

He tried to tell them he was fine, tried to tell Jane to stay in position, but nothing came out. Because he could now see the second shooter, the man that had saved his life, coming towards him with an M4 held tightly in his hands. Weller immediately brought his own weapon up—the fact that this man had just saved his life didn't mean he wasn't about to end it, too—and the approaching man surprised him by smiling. He stepped over the dead body, one hand still on his rifle, and the other, palm-up, in what appeared to be a sarcastic half-surrender. A wry smile twitched on his lips.

"You're welcome for the help, Special Agent Weller," he called out.

The man almost sounded like he was trying not to laugh, and Weller took an instinctive step forward, his finger tightening on the trigger. He could still hear Jane's breath in his ear still as she ran, could hear the updates from Reade and Zapata, but he paid attention to none of that. He kept his eyes on the tall man stepping towards him, kept his gun up, and pushed the pounding of his heart into the far corner of his mind.

"Who are you?" Weller demanded. "Drop your weapon and identify yourself."

The man smiled again. "Ah, that might be tricky. You see, I'm—"

But Weller never heard who he was, or who he wasn't. All he heard were two shots, booming across the shipyard, and then a resounding shriek so horrid and loud that he had to rip his earbud from his ear so he wouldn't go deaf. It hardly helped, though, because Jane's scream was no longer only in his ear; it was now just behind him, now streaking past him, as she sprinted to the man slipping to his knees, the man that had saved Weller's life, the man that had just taken two bullets to the chest and was now spitting up blood—

Weller turned at once, searching for the shooter, and caught sight of him as another shot went off—this one missing Jane by less than a foot. Heart slamming against his ribs, head beating against his skull, Weller did his best to stay calm as he took aim, breathed, let off as many shots as he could—and miraculously watched the second sniper fall, pitching off the side of the cargo ship and into the water.

"You're okay, you're okay, you're okay—"

Jane's desperate chanting cut through the momentary fog in his head, and he started for her, and the unidentified man, before he remembered the rest of the team. He wrestled his comm from his shoulder, and shoved it back in his ear as he turned towards the cargo ship again, just in time to hear Reade and Zapata report that they'd taken care of the rest of their suspects: they'd apprehended one alive; the rest were dead. Weller didn't even have time to congratulate them before Zapata was cutting in, demanding to know if Jane was still alive. Weller could still hear Jane's shriek reverberating in his ears as he assumed the other two could. Of course they thought she'd died; it had sounded like she had. He swallowed, glancing over to her. She was hunched over the shot man, whispering words Weller couldn't hear, her face pressed close to his, so close—

"Fine," he bit out, knowing it was a lie, but knowing it was all he could say at the moment. "She's fine," he told Reade and Zapata. And then he instructed them to bring their remaining suspect off the freighter, so he could be transported back to the NYO.

He took his earbud out then, and carefully put the safety back on his rifle. He took one step towards Jane, and then another. Her voice rose, and came to him as the beating of his lessened, and the adrenaline pumping through him gradually faded. He shuffled forward, listening even as he did not want to hear. Even from this distance, it was clear the man was already dead. Nothing Jane could say would bring him back, but her voice was adamant nonetheless.

"You're gonna be okay. You promised, remember? You swore you'd stay with me. You said I'd never be alone again. You said—"

When her words crumbled into tears, Weller finally found the courage to take those last few steps, and to reach out a hand to touch her shoulder gently. "Jane, hey..."

" _Do not touch me!"_ she shrieked, throwing him off so violently that Weller jerked back at once, more frightened in this moment with her than he had been all day. "Do not _ever_ touch me!" Jane screamed into the still air, and Weller drew away as if attacked, and faded into the background as she wept, and crouched closer to the dead man. She curled her entire body around him, as if he could still be protected, as if she could take the bullets he'd suffered, and bring him back to life.

When he heard two pairs of footsteps jogging his way, Weller did not look up. He knew it was Reade and Zapata, and he had nothing to say to them at this point. Zapata's lighter tread slowed first, a few yards back, but Reade's heavier tread kept up right until he was at Weller's side.

The special agent stared for a moment in silence and then turned his head towards Weller, asking in a whisper, "Who is that?" Anxiety and confusion etched deep creases in his usually clear, confident face.

Weller shook his head. "Don't know," he whispered back, keeping his voice low enough so as not to disturb Jane. "I've never seen him before in my life. He came out of nowhere..." Weller didn't know how to explain the rest, didn't know how to put into words the look on that man's face, the way he'd known his, Weller's, name, the way he'd saved his life and then died for it...

He found his voice again when he watched Zapata walk right past him, and make a beeline for Jane. Jane's order to stay away was still ringing in his ears, and he didn't want Tasha to suffer the same. He called out her name, taking a half-step forward to stop her, but she shook him off, too. There was a grim determination in her face that told him she knew what she was doing, more than he ever had, or ever could.

He hung back with Reade then, and watched as Zapata carefully made her way to Jane's side. She knelt down with her, and when she put her hand on Jane's back, the tattooed woman didn't flinch. She didn't even look up. Zapata leaned close to her, and for a while, Weller and Reade watched from yards away while she whispered words they couldn't hear into Jane's ear. They watched Jane pitch forward until her head rested on the man's chest, watched as Zapata hugged her tightly, and pressed her forehead into her shoulder. They watched as Jane shook and drew back, sitting back on her heels. They watched as she wiped at her face, and hiccupped through a few sobs, before she bent forward, took the dead man's face in her hands, and kissed him.

"Oh, fuck," Reade whispered quietly at his side, taking the words right out of Weller's mouth.

Even though he still couldn't hear, Weller could imagine what Jane was whispering now as she pulled away from the man— _I love you, I love you, I love you_ —and his gut twisted at the thought. Though he had faced his fair share of death, he could not imagine what it was like for Jane, who had no one, knew no one, to lose someone like this.

He felt again, that instinct to go to her, to comfort her, and even if his own self-preservation instincts hadn't held him back, there was Reade's hand suddenly on his shoulder, his fingers squeezing, his silent looking saying, _Leave it to Zapata._

So they did. They called for backup, for the morgue, and they waited. When their reinforcements arrived, Weller sent Reade with their remaining suspect to head back to the NYO. He stayed behind with Zapata and Jane when the coroner arrived, just in case Jane needed to be held back.

She didn't, as it turned out. Whatever Zapata had said to her seemed to have calmed her somewhat. She stood, still and stony and red-eyed, as the coroner and his assistant bagged the body and transferred it to the back of the truck. Jane climbed in without a word, and Zapata followed, and when the truck pulled away, Weller drove behind in the SUV.

He knew he should be going back to the NYO, should be sitting down with their suspect for interrogation, and debriefing with Mayfair, but he couldn't focus on any of that, not with Jane like this. So he messaged Reade to hold off on interrogation, and to let Mayfair know that she'd receive a full report once he was back in the Bureau. He pulled up behind the coroner's truck at the hospital, and watched from afar as Jane and Zapata got out. They didn't say anything to each other, but Jane followed the coroner and his assistant inside, and Zapata made her way to Weller's SUV.

Neither said anything for a moment after she'd climbed inside and shut the door. They didn't even look at each other.

Finally, Zapata buckled her seatbelt and said, "We should get back. Jane will probably be a while, and you know Mayfair's waiting."

Weller nodded without question, and pulled back onto the main road. They drove in silence for about ten minutes, until they arrived at the Bureau's parking garage. Weller pulled into his customary space on the third level, and cut the ignition. Neither he nor Zapata made a move to unbuckle their seatbelts, or get out of the car.

Finally, because he couldn't wait any longer, Weller asked, "Did she say anything?" And then, after a second, because that didn't feel right, he amended: "Anything I need to know before I go to Mayfair?"

Zapata shook her head. They went up to the sixteenth floor without exchanging another word.

Mayfair was not pleased with his version of events, but after she had spoken with both Reade and Zapata, and they had corroborated his story, she looked merely concerned. As much as the rest of them, she wanted to know who the nameless dead man had been, and why he had saved Weller's life—why he had even _been there_ to do so _,_ in the first place.

"I'll have to speak to Jane about this, too," she said as Weller was heading for the door. "Where is she?"

"Injured," Weller replied immediately, the first excuse that came to mind. "She's at New York-Presbyterian."

Mayfair pursed her lips a moment, and then nodded. "I'll speak to her tomorrow, then," she said.

Weller nodded in secret relief, and gratitude, and then left her office. He passed by Zapata and Reade's desks without pausing, leaving them to finish up their case reports, and then went on towards interrogation.

It didn't take long. The one suspect they'd manage to take alive was a kid—barely older than twenty—and he'd seen so many of his buddies go down in sprays of red today that he coughed up all he knew at once, which turned out to be quite a lot. Usually, Weller would be pleased with such a turnout. Overjoyed, even. But the whole time the kid was blurting out valuable information, crying as he did so, all Weller could do was think of Jane, and that dead man, and wonder how she was doing at the morgue. Every time the kid offered a new answer, Weller forgot the last one. It was a good thing every interrogation was recorded both visually and audibly; he could review later. And it was a good thing they didn't need to act on this information at once—they could pass it off to the Bureau's gang task force, and move onto the next case. As usual.

But when that time came, he could only listen to Patterson's debrief about the next tattoo for five minutes before he had to excuse himself. He told her he was going to the bathroom; he went down to the parking garage. He was back at this hospital likely before she'd realized he wasn't coming back—not that it mattered. Patterson wouldn't go telling on him to anyone.

He waited outside the morgue for nearly an hour and a half. As the minutes ticked by, and the ambulances sped in and sped away, Weller told himself this was a stupid idea. He told himself he should go back to work, that either Jane was going to stay in there all night, or she'd already left. He told himself he was not her security detail, that she _had_ no security detail anymore, and he found himself wondering that, if she did, would he know the identity of that mystery dead man through their reports?

After a few minutes of deliberation, he thought no. He remembered, as if from a very, very long time ago, the night she'd come to him outside his apartment and kissed him. She'd said she'd ditched her detail; she'd said she'd wanted time for them alone. No doubt that dead man, whoever he had been, had been important enough to her that she'd wanted to see him without prying eyes, too.

Weller shifted his eyes from the steering wheel, back to the morgue entrance. He remembered something Mayfair had told him, months ago, about how Jane had requested that her detail be dropped. He wondered suddenly, if that's what this had been about. He had thought, at first, that it had been about him. She'd requested the drop just a day after they'd kissed; he had thought it had been because she'd wanted to see more of him, and in private. But then she'd stood him up at the park, and he had pushed those hopes aside... He had never once entertained the possibility that she'd already had someone else, found someone else. It was disgustingly egotistical, he realized now, to think that he was the very center of her universe. To think that he was the only thing that mattered, the only person she could possibly be interested in—it was absurd.

At yet, still, today had come as a shock. And part of that shock, if he was being brutally honest with himself, had been borne out of jealousy. He had been jealous, that she had chosen this unknown dead man over him; jealous that she had screamed when he'd died as if she'd been the one that'd been killed. Jealous that she'd kissed him, wept over him, even though he'd been dead.

Jealous that she had had something, some _one_ , when he had had nothing and no one.

He had sunk to the depths of his self-centered pity party when he saw the morgue doors open out of the corner of his eye, and spotted her. He turned and saw her just as she looked up and saw him, and there was a moment, where she might've run away, but she did nothing. She didn't even blink at the sight of him, didn't lose a step. She simply walked right towards his SUV and climbed inside as if it had all been prearranged. He drove them both to her apartment in silence, and then walked her to her door.

As she was taking out her keys, he cleared his throat. They had not spoken yet, not since she'd screamed at him not to touch her, and he knew now, before he left her, was the time to say something. Suddenly, he found himself wishing Zapata were here. She had known how to talk to Jane; she had known how to help a friend through a murder. He did not have one word, be it comfort or not.

Finally, all that came out of his mouth was, "You know he saved my life today."

Jane nodded, pushing one of her keys into the lock. "Yeah, he does that a lot." Her face pinched, and then she bent forward until her forehead was pressed against the wood of the door. " _Did,"_ she whispered. " _Did_ that a lot."

She turned the key in the lock, and shoved it open. She did not say goodbye, she did not slam the door, and for whatever reason, Weller took that as an invitation. To step inside, to continue speaking.

"Why was he there?" he asked quietly. _Why did he have a weapon?_ he almost added, but he knew he was treading on shaky ground here, and that only one question at a time—if any—would be permitted.

"He was there to protect me," Jane replied. "Us," she added, depositing her keys in a bowl by the sink, as she walked into the kitchen. He knew from her voice that the _us_ included Zapata and Reade as well.

"So he's been there before?" Weller surmised. _How long?_ he wanted to ask. _How many times? How did he know—_

"He likes to keep an eye out for me," Jane answered simply, saying nothing and everything all at once. Weller didn't mention that she'd slipped back into the present tense again. He lingered at the edge of her kitchen, not sure if he was meant to follow her inside. She said nothing, but grabbed a glass and a bottle of bourbon from a bottom cabinet. She poured herself a serving, drank. She poured herself another serving, and—

"So you knew him?" Weller asked, forcing in an interruption, not wanting to stand there and watch her get hammered—and not wanting to be a part of it, either. "The man that died today... You knew him? Before all this?" Weller didn't know if he was asking about before the shipyard, or before her amnesia, but it didn't matter at this point.

Jane let out a brief breath that could've been a laugh, or a scoff. Or a precursor to a sob. "Yeah, I knew him."

She considered the glass in her hands, still full, and then threw it in the sink. Not just the alcohol, but the glass itself, and it shattered so loudly in the silent room that it made Weller jump inside his own skin. Jane simply stared, as if she had not heard a thing.

"I knew him for years and years… and I knew him for three and a half months." She drew closer to the sink, her eyes falling to the shards there, focusing on the mess. "How do you mourn someone like that?" she whispered. "How do you mourn someone you half-knew? I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I—"

She started to reach out a hand into the sink, towards the mess of broken glass, and Weller rushed to her side, pushing her hands away as gently as he could manage. He didn't want her around sharp objects right now.

"Just sit," he told her, pushing her aside, like she was a child. "Just sit, I'll take care of this."

He had meant that she should sit at the dining room table, or on the couch, but when he looked up after he'd collected every errant shard of glass, he found her sitting on the floor of the kitchen. She'd sunk down from where she'd been standing, and she now sat huddled against the counter, her knees drawn to her chest. She was crying silently, and he forced himself to do away with the debris before attempting to comfort her. Again, he wished Zapata were here. Again, he wished he knew more about the situation, knew who that man had been, and who he'd been to Jane.

But he figured even if he did know more, he wouldn't know what to do. It seemed even Jane didn't know what to do. As he watched, she went from full-on convulsions to completely still, staring at the wall in front of her. He thought of the glass he'd cleaned up, and he was glad. She was bouncing to extremes, and he didn't want to know what she would've done, if she'd been at the wrong extreme while she reached for those shards.

He whispered her name quietly, but she did not look up. He bent down in front of her, disrupting her eyeline, and spoke again, but it still took a few seconds for her to see him. Weller waited patiently; he knew who she was imagining in his place; knew whose body his was morphing into in her red, tear-blurred eyes. He waited until she blinked, and a different sort of recognition flashed through her.

"I want you to know I'm here for you, if you need anything." Weller paused, and thought to touch her, but her scream from earlier was still in his head—would probably _always_ be in his head—and so he held back. He clamped one hand around his own knee and continued, "Jane, I know it's really hard right now. I know you can't see past what happened this afternoon, and you might not for a while. But that's okay. You—You can take leave if you need it, and up your sessions with Borden, and—"

She wasn't listening anymore, he could tell. Her eyes were faraway, even as she looked him in the face, and the tears were back. It took all of his willpower to resist reaching out to wipe them away; it took all of his willpower not to reach forward and crush her in a hug, to hold her so tight hat she would have no choice but to feel alive again, and safe.

"I'm here for you," he finally said. It was a weak offer, but it was the most he had, at this point. "If you need me, I'm here, okay?"

He waited a moment, waited for some kind of sign, some acknowledgment, but she did nothing. Didn't even nod. He tried not to care, tried not to blame her. He had been through grief like this, too—or at least something like it—and he knew how it took everything from you, and twisted what little was left into shapes you couldn't recognize, and things you didn't want to see. Weller pushed himself back up to his feet then, thinking he would call, later tonight, just to check that she was okay, that she'd eaten. He'd call again in the morning, and tell her she didn't have to come to work if she didn't want to. He would call every hour if it meant he was doing something to help.

"Why are you leaving?"

He turned at the question, surprised to hear her speaking again. He was just stepping out of the kitchen, a couple feet from the front door, and when he looked back, she was still crumpled on the floor. But there was a look in her eyes—she could see him, really see him. He did not think he should like the shiver it sent through him, but he did.

He searched for an excuse in his suddenly empty mind. "Well, I'm—"

"Stay," she interrupted in a whisper, and there was something dark in her voice, something slow, that put a thrill of fear in him. A thrill of excitement.

"Stay?" he repeated dumbly, as if he did not know the word. And, in this context, he did not.

She nodded, and pushed out a hand onto the linoleum beside her. He watched her, knowing what this meant, knowing what it all meant, and yet... Still wanting it anyway.

 _Do not touch me,_ she had screamed at him this afternoon. _Do not ever touch me._

He would be lying if he said he wanted to erase those words from his memory, from her lips. He wanted to destroy them and all they stood for; he wanted to hear nothing from her except, _Touch me, touch me, touch me._ He wanted to be that dead man, just so he could feel her lips on his, and taste her devotion in her tears.

"I want you to stay," Jane said, and it was much less of a request and much more of a command. And despite his years in control, and all his leadership training, Weller found himself bowing to her order at once.

Hadn't he, after all, dreamed of a moment like this? Hadn't he fantasized about her saying something like this to him, just before she put her hands on him, her mouth on his, just before she took off her clothes and—

"Sit," she said, and he did.

He took his customary place at her side, trying not to think of those old hopes and dreams, trying not to acknowledge that they were not old, not really. Just two days ago, he had found himself distracted from his paperwork, staring at her at work, wondering what she would do if he showed up outside her apartment one night, and kissed her out of the blue, as she had him.

As if reading his mind, she turned towards him after he sat down, and bent her head to his. He let out a sigh, his whole body shuddering, when he felt one of her hands reach for his far shoulder, to turn him properly towards her. It was until she ran a hand through his hair, and down his neck, and cupped his cheek, that he found his voice.

"You don't want this," he whispered. He was close enough that he could smell her breath: could smell the trace of alcohol there, and the overwhelming sobriety. "You don't want..." It pained him to say it, but it needed to be said: "You don't want me, Jane."

She shook her head, and to his surprise, actually laughed quietly. He opened his eyes, and she met them, whispering, "You and him, always telling me what I don't want." She curled a hand around his ear, and hooked her fingers tightly beneath his jaw to keep him close. "You know what? I'll tell you exactly what I told him when he said that: shut up, and kiss me."

She didn't wait for a reply—she dove forward, pressing her mouth to his, and there was nothing gentle or innocent about her kiss this time, as there had been that first time. The first time, outside his apartment, had been tentative and slow and utterly sweet. This second time was ravenous and forceful and desperate. So desperate. He could taste it on her tongue, taste it on her lips; he could feel it through her fingertips: the need to forget, to rewrite the past. The need to move forward as if nothing had happened, and nothing could happen. The need to own the present, simply because nothing else, ever, could hope to be controlled.

He had felt such an urge before. It was not a good whim to give into. But it was often impossible to refute.

When she surged into him, pushing forward until her chest met his, he gave up even pretending to fight. He tangled a hand in her dark hair, took her mouth with his, and pressed himself into her, too. With only that first, tender kiss to look back on, he expected her to melt beneath his advances, expected her to lie back on the floor and let him move atop him, let him lead the way.

But she didn't. Instead, she met him beat for beat; she pushed her tongue into his mouth and dragged her hands through his hair and climbed into his lap. She rocked into him, her hips fierce and determined in their quest to have him, feel him, and when she started to tear through his clothes, he was not surprised anymore. He did not ask her if she knew what she was doing, or if this was really what she wanted, or if she wanted to take things slow. He knew without having to speak that she would not permit questions, would not abide by hesitation, and the deepest, most male part of him, was glad for this.

He didn't want to ask questions, didn't want to get answers, at least not right now. He didn't want to do anything except feel her naked body on his, around his, and he got his wish, no matter how selfish and shortsighted it was.

 _Bad idea,_ the small pocket of reason left within him warned.

 _Don't give a shit,_ the rest of him shouted back.

They didn't end up moving to her bed, or another room: they fucked right there, on her kitchen floor. He couldn't call it making love, because that was not what it had been, and calling it simple sex took away the heat of it, took the sharp edge of violence from it. Because it was violent: the way she dug her nails into his back, and shoved their hips together so hard they bruised, and bit his lip so hard he bled into her mouth. It was more violent than any sex he'd had in years.

And it felt better than any sex he'd had in years. Maybe in all his life.

Still, part of him was disappointed that when she came, it was his, Weller's, name that escaped from between her lips. He had wanted to hear the other man's name, had wanted to put a label the face floating between them; he had wanted to recognize the ghost haunting them for what it was. He kissed her hard afterwards, pushing himself to the end along with her, and he swore as he did so that he could almost taste the silent name on her lips, just as he could feel the aftershocks of her orgasm. He could almost count the syllables, see the letters in his mind's eye.

But it never came to him in full form; she did not allow it. She allowed him everything else: allowed his fantasies to be reality, allowed his body inside hers, allowed him to make believe that he was bringing her real comfort, or somehow doing the right thing. But she never said that other name.

And it was horrible, how desperately he wanted even that last, tiny thing from her. How he wanted to take everything from her, _even this_ ; how he wanted them to share everything together, _even him_.

He was at the door when he she finally spoke.

"I wonder if he's laughing to himself in the morgue."

Weller turned, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Was it possible they'd just fucked each other into insanity? But when he caught her eye, she looked still, serious. He could tell she saw him when she looked at him.

"He always said this would happen," she explained, as if that explained anything. She smiled the smallest bit, and then the tears came again. He heard the next few words through shaking sobs. "I guess he'd at least be relieved I waited until he was dead." A cold laugh cut through her tears then, as she wiped at them viciously: "Jesus, what kind of a monster am I? He saves your life, dies for it, and I… _What_? I fuck you because I'm lonely and sad? What kind of person does that? Who honors the dead like that?"

 _Lots of people do,_ Weller thought.

But instead he asked, "Did you love him?"

She blinked up at him, quiet for a moment, as she considered him, and his question. "I don't know," she said finally. "Do you love that little girl that disappeared all those years ago?"

For once, he didn't have an answer. The immediate _Yes_ that came to mind felt false and bitter on his lips. It felt like an apology for wrongs done, and not a simple, honest feeling. Jane nodded along with his silent thoughts, as if she could hear them.

"Same here," she whispered. "I think we've all lost too much time with each other to be wholly certain of what we feel anymore."

Then she got up and went to bed, and he left her apartment and drove himself home.

* * *

 **A/N** : Thank you for reading. Reviews would be most appreciated if you have thoughts! :)


	2. You Take What You Need

**Title** : _"You take what you need, and you know you don't need me."_ (1/1)  
 **Rating** : NC-17  
 **Pairing** : Jane Doe/Kurt Weller  
 **Summary** : He imagines the rest of his life will be like this, with him coming home to find her waiting.

 **A/N** : A little follow-up to the last chapter.

* * *

When he gets home from work late the next night, Jane is waiting for him in his kitchen. He stops cold in the entryway, and stares at her. She is sitting at one of the barstools at the counter, in her usual jeans and a tank top, and she has her leather jacket slung over the back of one of the chairs. It is impossible to tell how long she has been sitting there, but he imagines hours.

He imagines days.

He imagines the rest of his life will be like this, with him coming home to find her waiting.

It is not a comforting thought, given the circumstances.

He takes his time shrugging out of his coat, and hanging it up. He takes his time setting his keys carefully on the counter, in their prescribed place. He takes his time not looking at her, but feeling her eyes on him. Finally, he cannot ignore her any longer. Their eyes meet, and they both grow still, tensing, in different ways, for the same inevitable outcome.

Because they both know what is about to happen between them, and why.

He does not ask her how or when she broke into his home.

He does not ask her if she saw Borden during her time off today.

He does not ask her if she is okay, or if she wants to talk.

He knows all the answers, anyway. He closes his eyes. Breathes. Opens them and starts to say her name…

She allows him to say it. She allows him to act confused, and surprised, and concerned at her presence here. She allows him to take a step towards her, to touch her arm gently, to ask if she's doing all right after what happened yesterday.

She doesn't say anything in all this time. She stares at a spot on the floor between them and does not look up. Then, as if some sort of internal timer within her had suddenly gone off, she reaches down and strips off her tank top. He had been in the middle of speaking, in the middle of saying yet another meaningless comfort that she obviously wasn't listening to, and even though he'd known when he'd stepped into his apartment that this was going to happen, the act still catches him off-guard.

He stands and stares as she bares her skin to him, as she tosses her shirt on the floor and then her bra and then starts to undo her jeans. It isn't until she's pushing them and her underwear down, kicking them off, that he finally finds the will to speak.

And all he can say is, "Not here."

His body still aches from yesterday, from the first and last time, and he does not want a repeat. He does not want them to fuck each other senseless on a kitchen floor again like they're trying to follow their loved ones into death.

Her head snaps up at the sound of his voice, and for the first time since he walked in the door, he thinks she can actually hear him. See him. He can't let that moment go, and so he moves forward, pulling her into a tight hug. She stiffens beneath his touch, he can feel it, but somehow her arms come up around his back anyway. Somehow, her forehead falls to rest against his chest.

"Anywhere else," he whispers into her hair, rubbing his hands over her bare back. "Anywhere you want, Jane, just not here."

He stares at his name forever inked between her shoulderblades, waiting for her to answer. Then he gives up and closes his eyes, pressing his face into the hollow made by her shoulder and neck.

"I don't care where," she says finally into his shirt, and when she pulls back, he can see it in her dull eyes: she truly does not care. Nothing matters to her, not now, not with the guilt and the sorrow and the loneliness crushing down upon her like so many tons of immovable rock.

He takes her hand, and pulls her back into the apartment, back into his bedroom. As he passes by the empty guest room, he finds himself both relieved and disappointed that his sister and her son no longer live with him. If Sarah and Sawyer had been here, there was no way Jane would've come to him like this. But with them gone…

He had pictured this moment a lot: the first time he ever brought her into his bedroom. He had thought about it when they'd first kissed outside his apartment, and he'd thought about it when he'd waited for her in vain at that park, and he'd thought about it last night, when they'd had sex on her kitchen floor.

He had always pictured it to be a romantic moment, a sweet moment. He had imagined that she might be nervous, and that he would reassure her, and that he would make things as easy and comfortable as possible for her. He had thought that maybe they'd linger in the room awhile, before doing what they came to do; he had pictured her looking at his framed pictures or the books beside his bed or the clothes he sometimes left scattered on the floor. Most of all, he had always pictured how _right_ it would feel, to bring her to his bedroom, to lead them into a new phase of their relationship together.

He did not picture it like this: her already naked and barely better than comatose, and him unable to say no to what she asked of him.

She says nothing as he lets her inside, and closes the door behind them. She says nothing as he slowly moves to stand in front of her, and then stops a foot away. She stares at him as he stands there in his clothes, and he stares at her as she stands there in nothing but her ink.

He tries to think of something to say, fails, and ultimately just ends up standing there, silent, as she pulls at his clothes. Shirt, gone; pants, gone. He kicks off his shoes, his socks. She reaches for him through his underwear and he swears, low and dark, and feels her push herself into him in reply. Her body is slim and small against his, but there is power there, power he feels like she is sapping from him, and lets her do it. Lets her take control, lets her push him back down onto the bed, lets her crawl on top of him, lets her kiss him until he's scared he'll pass out.

They are both breathing hard when they pull apart, and he takes the brief respite to fumble blindly with the bedside table, searching for a condom. He finds one, somehow, but then her mouth is on his again, her nails scraping through his hair, and he's too focused on holding her to him (as if she would leave, now, before she got what she came for), that he doesn't put it on right away.

It hardly matters for, after a few seconds, she takes it from him, ripping through the thin foil easily, and he thinks as he watches her put it on that they should talk, about the day before. They didn't use any sort of protection yesterday, and he came inside her, and the last thing either of them needs right now is a child conceived out of this mess they've created—

But then there's her voice in his ear, low and seductive and yet somehow still commanding, whispering, _Fuck me now,_ and he knows they don't need to have a talk. She doesn't need to be told anything. She knows exactly what she's doing; she's known it for some time, apparently. She doesn't need to be versed in the potential consequences—or at least, not those particular consequences.

Like all her most recent directives, he obeys this one, and takes a selfish pride in the way she parts for him as he does so: her body and mouth and voice, all breaking open for him. His name bursts from her lips as he pushes inside, the same way it did when she came for him yesterday, and he takes a sick pleasure in it as he kisses her neck and scrapes his teeth against the length of the bird there, just to feel her push herself harder into him.

 _Don't stop,_ she says, wrapping her hands tight around either side of his neck. Her nails are digging in too far again, drawing blood against just like they did yesterday, but he doesn't care. The pain doesn't matter when he's inside her; nothing matters when he's inside her.

When he needs more—he's like her, it seems, he always needs more—he turns them over and lays her flat on her back, joining them again with a slam of bone on bone. She is still kissing him, and her arms are still wrapped around him, and her legs, too, but her eyes are closed. He wants to ask her if she's picturing _him_ , the dead man, while he's inside her. He wants to know the name she keeps locked inside; he wants to know what they were to one another.

Certainly more than this: furious, frantic bodies, crashing into one another in the night, without words or feeling or anything except a will to finish it, and another will to never let it stop.

She does not cry out his name this time, when she comes, but instead clenches her teeth together, holding the sound inside, the name inside—whichever it is this time—as she bursts and contracts around him. He swears, angry and harsh when she does so, knowing he'll be coming soon, too, knowing how she triggers him—always, she sets him off, be it at work or in the field or here, now, in his bed.

He buries his face into the mattress just beside her head when he comes, wondering how in the world this is how it finally happened. All those weeks spent imagining this, imagining having her here—and this is what it's like? This is it?

After a few minutes, she pushes against his shoulders, wanting him off, and he obliges, removing himself carefully from between her legs so she can get up. He watches her move to the edge of the bed as he gets to his feet, and goes into the bathroom to toss out the condom and wipe himself off. He expects when he comes back out that she will be on her feet, pulling her clothes back on. But she's still sitting on the edge of the bed. He can't see her face, but he can see her shaking.

He closes his eyes and bites his lip—breaking open the cut she gave him yesterday—so he won't swear aloud. When he gets close enough, he sits down gingerly beside her, poised on the edge of his seat. The words she screamed at him yesterday afternoon— _Don't ever touch me!_ —reverberate in his ears again, and he waits to hear them from her once more. But she says nothing. She doesn't even look up. She just sits there on the edge of his now-rumpled bed, and stares into space. He knows what she is seeing, and not seeing. He knows who she is looking for in the middle distance, who she is searching for in the haze that follows such physical intimacy.

He thinks of reaching out and touching her, of holding her, but he doesn't know how to do that anymore, at least not in a platonic way. Perhaps not in any way.

Finally, he clears his throat. He hears her sniff beside him, as if in response.

He lifts his head. "You know you're gonna be okay," he says to the room.

She laughs a little, as if this is a bad joke at an even worse time.

"No," she says softly, shaking her head. "I'm really not."

He watches her stand and dress and go. He hears the front door shut, and he jumps at the sound. He is still sitting there on the bed, still wondering why in the world he ever thought he was capable of comforting her.

* * *

 **A/N** : Thank you for reading!


	3. Don't Undress My Love

**Title** : _Don't Undress My Love (You Might Find a Mannequin)_ [1/1]  
 **A/N** : A continuation.

* * *

Four weeks they have been at this. Four weeks of sleepless nights and darkening bruises and endless break-ins. Four weeks of him dreading coming home because he might find her there; four weeks of him staying up all night, waiting in vain, when he doesn't.

Four weeks of him taking her to bed like it is somehow right, somehow healthy.

Four weeks of him telling himself he'll stop them both before it happens again.

Four weeks of silent lies, four weeks of dark truths.

Four weeks of nothing changing, not one single thing, and then—

* * *

It is a Thursday night, and she is standing in his kitchen, already half-naked by the time he walks in. His feet slow to a halt at the sight of her, exhausted already, and though his eyes want to close, _need_ to close, they can do nothing but stare at her skin as she bares it to him.

He can still remember the first time he came home and found her here, the day after that man was shot dead in front of them. He remembers taking her to his bedroom for the first time; he remembers how he gave into all her wants without protest—because deep down, they had been his wants, too. He remembers telling her, afterward, that she'd be okay, she'd recover from what happened. He remembers how she spotted the lie at once, and left without saying goodbye.

They have never talked about that first night, nor the afternoon that preceded it, and little has changed since. He still does as she asks, and he still fails to regret any of it until after it's already over. (And sometimes not even then.) She still leaves immediately afterwards, without a word, and they still never speak of it the following day.

But it has been four weeks. Four weeks of these late night trysts, four weeks of this mess getting messier. He needs to end it now before it becomes a serious problem. He needs to end it before they do each other permanent damage—if they haven't already.

Her shirt is already on the floor by the time he steps into the kitchen, and he reaches down to pick it up as he approaches her. He can hear her unbuttoning her jeans, can hear her undoing the zipper, and when she starts to shove them down, he straightens up and gently covers her hands with his to stop her.

She doesn't hesitate for even a second. Instead, she simply switches tactics, and moves her quick hands from her body to his. She reaches up, snaking a hand around his neck to pull his mouth down to hers, and while she's busy kissing him, her other hand rifles through the buttons on his shirt. They've been here before—he's tried to put her off before—and she knows which tactics work with him. She knows how he likes the slip of her tongue, warming his mouth; she knows how the scratch of her nails on the back of his neck will make him move forward without a thought; she knows if she bites the edge of his bottom lip—

But tonight, he can't give in. Tonight, he has to be firm with her, for both their sakes'. He has to end this.

"Jane…"

He breaks his mouth from hers, and reaches out gently to pull her hands off of him. But she is obstinate, more so than usual, and she holds on tight. He can feel her growing more desperate as he tries to pry her curled fingers free from him, and he wonders, vaguely, if it's because of the dead man. It's been a month now since he was shot and killed in front of them. Maybe her memories of him are becoming hazy and blurred. Maybe she can't see his face anymore; maybe she can't feel his hands or taste his kiss or imagine him here, holding her, when she closes her eyes and they have sex in his absence.

Because that's what she's doing on these nights they spend together, Weller knows. He isn't naïve. He isn't stupid. He knows what these trysts between them are about; he knows whom she is searching for in his body. And for a while, that had been fine. For a while, he had understood what she had been doing, and where she had been coming from. He had surrendered himself to it.

But it's been four weeks. He doesn't need to be a shrink to know this pattern of behavior isn't healthy.

Somehow, he finally summons what little authority he has left when it comes to her, and he steps out of her reach. He holds her at bay with on hand and passes over her crumpled tank top with the other.

"I think maybe—" He tries not to look at her as he lets go of the garment. "I think you should get dressed and go home now, Jane."

The room is silent around them for a moment, the air charged. He can't help it—his eyes dart to hers, and he watches the look in them change, watches his words settle across her furrowed brow. There's a beat, and then—

Then she laughs. Actually laughs, right in his face.

"Are you really going to tell me no, Weller?" A grin, dark like he's never seen, rises on those pale, otherworldly lips of hers. Her voice lowers. Her eyes, too. "And how far do you think that's gonna get you, huh?"

Already, she is stepping closer to him; already, her hand is dragging itself down his half-bare chest. His lips try to form the word _No_ , try to say _Stop_ , but neither comes out.

"This isn't right," he manages, the only thing that's truthful. He hopes the moral high ground will protect him.

Her hand stills halfway down his abdomen—good—but her eyes rise to his again—bad.

"Why not?" she returns. Her voice is soft, curious—like she really wants to know. But he can sense the danger in it; he can feel the trap closing around him. "You're not married. I'm not married. As far as I know, you're not seeing anyone else, and neither am I. No one's being cheated on. And we're both consenting adults, taking the proper precautions. How is this not right?"

He shakes his head, starting to turn away. He needs to get way from her, out of her reach. It's easier to deny her when there's space between them. "You know that's not what I mean, Jane."

She grabs onto his shirt, hard, and yanks him back. "Well, what do you mean, then, Weller? Explain yourself."

"You're…" He can't meet her eye. "You're not in your right mind. You lost someone, and—"

"And look at me," she snaps, stepping forward so fast he nearly stumbles over himself trying to get out of her way. "Look at me! I'm not crying. I'm not incoherent. I'm clear-headed, I know what I want, and what I _want_ is—"

"You're _grieving_ , Jane."

"We're all grieving, Weller!" she shouts back. "What do you think this life is, huh? What do you think our jobs are? We won't ever stop grieving. It's who we are; it's what we've chosen. _Grief_ is our way of life."

He looks away, shielding his eyes from her face and her flaming gaze, but he's unable to refute the truth of her statement. She is right, and they both know it.

"Still," he continues after a moment, "there's a right way to deal with that grief. And being with me…" He shakes his head. "It isn't right anymore, Jane. Okay? It's not right. You need to get some help, or—"

"You want me to go to Borden." The disgust in her voice is as thick as spit as she lets go of his shirt and turns away.

"I want you to go to _anyone_ ," he corrects, following after her as she stalks to the other side of the room. "I want you to talk with _someone,_ someone who can help. Look, I know it's hard. I've been where you've been; I've lost people. I know it's easy to want to ignore what you're feeling, to bury it in drugs or alcohol or sex, or whatever makes you feel better, but Jane, you have to know—"

"I'm sorry, are you the new psychiatrist in my life now?" she demands, whirling around. "Because I don't need two; one man judging my actions is more than enough, thank you."

"Jane, I'm not—"

"I didn't come here to get my head examined, Weller. I came here to have sex. Either you're going to help me on that front, or I'll go find someone else who will." She stares him down from across the room, and in the silence before she speaks, he listens to the trap she set from that very first afternoon snap closed around him. "Now, tell me, Weller, is that what you really want? Do you want me to go seeking out strangers and letting them into my bed? Surely you want better for me, right? You always want better for me."

He closes his eyes, bringing up a hand to rub over his forehead. Why is she doing this to him?

"Jane, come on…"

"You come on."

Her footsteps are light in her bare feet, but they may as well be as loud as cannonfire as she makes her way back towards him, across the room. He tracks each one, listening to her come closer and closer. She stops a mere foot away. He can sense her, just out of reach. He can feel the air in front of him being disturbed by her breath. God, he wants so badly to touch her. He hates himself for it.

"Come on." Her voice is soft, encouraging, as if she can read his mind and knows he needs only the littlest push to tip over. "I know you want me. Don't make a fool of yourself by trying to pretend otherwise."

He shakes his head. Against his will, his eyes open. "Wanting you has nothing to do with this," he insists.

She smiles blandly at his conviction. "Oh, wanting has everything to do with it. It's sex, Kurt. All it's about is wanting."

 _That's not true,_ he wants to say. He looks into her eyes and he wants to tell her, _It can be more than that._

But between them, the painful truth is that it _isn't_ more than that, at least not for her. He knows why she comes here, and it isn't for anything more or anything different than what she professes it to be. It isn't for love or friendship or comfort or healing. It's for satisfying a need and it's for keeping the grief at bay and it's for spending a couple minutes a day not being completely alone. He is merely a vehicle through which she gets what she wants—respite from the pain and the guilt—and if he doesn't come through, she'll find a new avenue. Junkies always get their fix.

But he doesn't want her to do that. He's prideful and he's selfish and she's right, _he wants her_ , and now that she is with him (even if it's just for this), he doesn't want to let her go. He doesn't want her to be with anyone else. He has her, finally—and he can't bear to lose her, not again.

And she can sense that. Like a shark tasting blood in the water or a dog smelling cooking meat, she can sense that what she so desires is close at hand. She can sense it's about to be hers.

And she reaches out for it.

She lifts a hand to his face and scrapes her fingers through the scruff on his cheek. His eyes flicker closed, flicker open, as if he's just been drugged and is quickly losing consciousness. She's close enough that he can smell her now, and he thinks perhaps he has been.

"What do you want me to say, hm?" she murmurs, dragging her fingers this way and that through the stubble on his cheek. "What is it you'd like to hear, to get you in the mood? What will do the trick? Do you want me to talk about how this is all I think about while we're at work? How I watch the clock and count down the hours and the minutes until the day is over, and I can be here with you?"

"Jane…" He closes his eyes, reaching up to still her hand. "Come on. Let's not—"

When he tries to push her hand away, she shakes off his touch, and then grips his face hard between her two hands. "What else, huh?" she whispers, tilting her chin back to catch his eye. "What else would Special Agent Kurt Weller like to hear from lost little Jane Doe? Hm? Want me to talk about how alone I feel? Want me to tell you that I've been having nightmares? Do you want me to say that I replay his death over and over again in my head—that I hear those gunshots in my ears when I lie awake at night? Do you want me to say that I need you to protect me, to keep the monsters away?"

He shakes his head sharply, pulling away. "Jane, stop it. Don't turn it into this—"

"Or maybe you want something else," she continues, and though he knows he should turn away, he can't, because her hands have fallen back to her jeans again, and she's shoving them down her legs. He watches in silence, his mouth going dry, as she kicks them off. Despite the number of times he's seen her naked, he still hasn't gotten used to the sight of all that ink on her skin. It is mesmerizing. It is darkly, wrongly sexy. He traces the patterns with his eyes, up and down her legs.

"I know you're curious about him," she continues in an undertone as she straightens up. "I saw you reading the coroner's report. You know his name now, his blood type, his age. What else do you want to know about him?"

She is stepping closer again, but he can't stop her. He can't tell her to leave; he can't leave himself. She is wearing nothing besides her bra and underwear now, and he notices with rising arousal and dread that they match. He doesn't know why it turns him on, these small things she does, these tiny details she thinks of, but he can't help the effect: he wants her. The two black pieces of lace barely hide anything—they are little more than extensions of the intricate ink penned into her skin—and yet he stares at them as if this is his first time ever seeing her without clothes on.

"Do you want to know the things we did together? What he said to me, before we had sex? During? After? Do you want to know the things we talked about when we were alone, the privacies we shared? Do you want to know how he touched me, and how it made me feel?"

The skin of his throat is thick and dry, and though he swallows, there is nothing to say. He wants her to tell him all of those things, and nothing. He wants to know her secrets, every last one, and he wants to go to his grave believing she has none.

He wants to be the only one that matters, and yet he can't help being curious about who came before.

"What do you want to hear, Weller?" she demands, her seductive demeanor breaking with fury as she grabs his shirt in fistfuls, desperate for a response. "Tell me what you want! Is this a competition; is that it? Do you want me to tell you that you're better in bed than he was? Is that all it is—are you just jealous that someone else got to me first? Have I become nothing of consequence to you, now, after him? Am I plain to you, boring— _used_?"

Her anger sparks his, and he finally finds words. "No! No, Jane, _Jesus_ , that's not—"

"I know I'm not your perfect little virgin fantasy anymore, Kurt, but I am still me! I still want you, and I know you still want me! Why won't you just give in to that?" Her voice lowers and her hands loosen, then, and smooth over his rumpled shirt, touching the bare chest beneath. "Why won't you just give us both what we want?" she whispers, stepping closer, fire leeched from her once more, only embers in its place. "Where's the harm in that, huh?"

"Jane…" He closes his eyes when he feels her press her body against his. "I don't think…" He swallows hard when she kisses him, and wraps her arms around the back of his neck. He tries to pull away, tries to say her name again, but the only thing that leaves his lips is a soft noise—of desire, of disapproval, of both; it doesn't matter.

She doesn't care.

She takes his hands in hers and brings them to her bare skin. "Touch me," she whispers, unraveling one of his balled-up fists and pressing it flat to her bare stomach. "I know you want to."

He shakes his head, but it's hard to refute the truth, not when her lips are on him, not when his hands are being placed on her bare skin. He tries to breathe, tries to think of a way out, but she smells so good, this close to him, and her skin is so warm, so smooth, and somehow, in his addled brain, it seems a worse crime _not_ to touch her.

And it's so easy. They've done this so many times before; it's basically muscle memory at this point: his hands know exactly where to go (circling her waist, then sliding up her back to undo her bra); hers know how to hold him in place (tight around the back of his neck, her fingertips pulling a bit on the short hairs there). It is all going according to plan—hers, at least—until her mouth lifts from his and she whispers his name and he remembers that no, this isn't the plan. This is the exact opposite of the plan. _We can't keep doing this_.

All she does when he pushes her away is sigh. For a second, he hopes it means she's going to give up, put her clothes back on, and head home. But of course she stands her ground. She's always stood her ground, right from the moment he met her.

She starts to open her mouth, but he shakes his head. "Don't. I don't want to hear whatever it is you have to say. Whatever way you try to convince me—" He turns away; he can't look at her anymore. "It's not gonna work, Jane. I was serious when I said this had to stop."

"Just as you were serious, I'm sure, all the other times you said this has to stop."

He refuses to rise to the bait, and instead turns away, putting a few feet between them. He tries to do up the buttons on his shirt as he walks away, but his hands are shaking too much to make any progress.

He senses her standing just behind him, without actually feeling her touch him or hearing her move. Her bare feet are silent on the wood floors, and for once, she keeps her hands to herself, but he knows she's just behind him, shadowing him. Any second now, she'll reach out and touch him, and drag him back to down to the place he so badly wants to escape and so sorely never wants to leave.

"I might not know much, at least not by the rest of the world's standards, but I know a show when I see one, Weller."

Her voice is faint, soft, and he shuts his eyes. He does not want to listen to her anymore, does not want to give her another chance. But he is powerless in her presence, always has been. He listens, and he does not interrupt.

"What is it you really want to hear? What are you holding out for?"

Her hands are on his back now, sliding up, then over, his shoulders. He can feel her forehead, resting lightly against the middle of his back. His heart is pounding beneath his ribs, and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to keep himself under control.

"I think I know," she whispers in his ear, lifting her head. "I think I know what you want to hear."

He shakes his head, the whole of him almost trembling beneath her touch, but she doesn't listen. She never listens.

"You want me to say those three little words, don't you? Because that'll make it _all_ better, won't it? That'll make it all, somehow… _right,_ don't you think? Because right now it's not—you've made that very clear. It's not right and it's unhealthy and it's unethical, and, oh, if people knew…" He can feel her laugh softly, just behind his ear. Like this is a game. "But if I say the reason I'm here, the reason I take you to bed, the reason I keep coming back, is because _I love you,_ then everything's fixed, isn't it? Because love makes everything better, doesn't it? It makes even the ugliest things pure. It makes us into something we've never been and never will be, but if I just say the words, at least you can _pretend_ —"

"Shut the hell up, Jane."

His voice is so low and furious that for a moment, it stops her entirely in her tracks. For a moment, they are both motionless, speechless.

Then a smile creeps into the corners of her mouth. He can feel it, against his neck.

"That's it then," she whispers. Her hands tighten around his chest. " _That's_ what this is about. _That's_ why you can't say no."

"Jane…"

His voice is fury on the move; like rolling thunder coming closer, she can feel the threat of a spark. She knows she's close. If she pushes just a little more…

"Should've known," she muses. "I mean, you asked me that first afternoon, didn't you? Right after he died, you asked me if I loved him or not. And I never really gave you a straight answer, because I didn't have one myself. Still don't. And so you keep letting me come back, keep hoping something will change…"

 _Nothing will change._

She doesn't need to say it aloud for it to be true.

He closes his eyes. He can feel one of her hands, pressed flat against his raging heart. He can feel her mouth, nestled close beneath his ear. He can feel her entire body, pressed naked against the back of his.

"Just…" He sucks in a breath, wishing her were a stronger man. A better man. "Just know that I tried to end this. I _tried_ , okay?"

He can feel her smile again, that faint shift of her lips against his neck. "Sure, Kurt. Sure you tried."


End file.
